Marjorie Marugg-Wolfe with MedalWe had one fewer gift to buy this Mother's Day, one fewer card to send, one fewer phone call to make. A little more than two months ago, my mother-in-law, Marjorie Marugg-Wolfe, Ed. D., died after a two-year battle with breast cancer at the age of 79.

In lieu of that gift, that card, that call, it seems fitting to remember her and, in particular, her decades of dedication to the needs of single parents. She was a remarkable woman. Everyone gets the one-line notice on the Births and Deaths page of the paper, some may get a paid obituary, but there aren't many whose passing rates a news story and an editorial commendation for a "life well spent."

From the Rogers Morning News editorial column, Friday, March 8, 2013:

... the deck is often stacked against single parents and their families. Marjorie Marugg-Wolfe of Rogers began to understand those barriers in the 1970s, first while studying at the University of Arkansas and later through her work as a vocational counselor helping students find ways to pay for higher education.

"There was one group I couldn't help, and it haunted me," Marugg-Wolfe once said of her realization single parents faced tremendous obstacles.

Nobody knew a movement to help single parents was about to be born. Since, that movement has provided nearly 30,000 scholarships valued at nearly $16 million. What happened was a perfect coalescence of a need, an idea of how to address it and the people with passion, energy and drive to make a difference. Marugg-Wolfe was their inspirational leader....

"What Marjorie has been able to do is change the lives, in one generation, of multiple generations," Jim Von Gremp, a board member of the Benton County program, said at a 2012 University of Arkansas event at which Marugg-Wolfe was named a distinguished alumna. "The families study together. The children study because the mother studies. The children see the mother work to achieve, and in one generation, you develop a second set of college graduates."...

Marugg-Wolfe was quick to note she didn't do it all on her own. What he did, however, was nurture an idea into its full realization. Where others might have seen a problem too big to solve, she saw an opportunity to help those she could.

Although she received award after award for her devotion, the real prize for her work live on in the improved circumstances of thousands of single parents who have been, and continue to be, affected, and the future generations whose lives have been forever improved.

We'd call that a life well spent.

Marjorie-House.jpgMarjorie grew up on a dairy farm on Pleasant Grove Road in the Bellview community southwest of Rogers in Benton County, Arkansas, the sixth of nine children. As a high school senior, Marjorie was society editor for the Rogers Daily News, co-edited the school yearbook, and class valedictorian.

In the middle of her senior year, her mother died of leukemia. At 17, she was the oldest child still at home. She deferred her dreams of college and scholarship offers to serve as homemaker for her bereft father and surrogate mother to her younger siblings. When her father remarried, she went on to college, earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Arkansas.

While in college she met and married Navy veteran Alfred F. Marugg from Texas and the two moved to the Maryland suburbs of Washington, where they raised two daughters. She earned a master's degree from the University of Maryland. When Al retired from civil service, the family moved back near Rogers, to an acreage just a mile from where Marjorie grew up.

With her daughters off to college, Marjorie went back to school, too, to earn an Educational Specialist degree, with a focus on "displaced homemakers," stay-at-home moms who suddenly find themselves divorced or widowed and needing a job.

As coordinator of the Homemakers in Transition Program at Northwest Vo-Tech, Marjorie found that unexpected expenses could deter single parents from pursuing the education they needed in order to escape poverty. A student might have a full-ride scholarship, but that wouldn't cover an expensive car repair.

To meet the need, Marjorie worked with countless generous volunteers and donors to start the Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Benton County in 1984. (Helen Walton was an early and generous supporter.) Marjorie co-founded the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund, and the program has spread to 70 Arkansas counties.

After her husband Al's death in 1990, Marjorie went back to school once again, earning a doctorate of education at the University of Arkansas in 1993. In 1992, she was remarried to John Wolfe, a high school classmate who had also been recently widowed. They traveled to Europe and the Far East and across America and enjoyed boating on Beaver Lake and Rogers Class of '51 gatherings.

Pres Bush with Dr. Marugg-Wolfe_edited-500px.jpgMarjorie_Huckabee-2005-500px.jpgHer advocacy for single parents was recognized by President George W. Bush at the White House in 2002, when she received the President's Community Volunteer Award from the Point of Light Foundation. (The photos above and to the left show her on that occasion.) In 2005, she received the Community Service Award from the Arkansas Department of Human Services and Governor Mike Huckabee.

In 2008, Marjorie became the founding president of ASPIRE (Assisting Single Parents in Realizing Education), a nationwide support network for single parent scholarship programs across the country.

2009_Benton_County_Single_Parent_Scholarship_Fund_Students.jpg

Marjorie (in purple dress, center) with Benton County Single Parent Scholarship Fund students at the 2009 awards banquet.

In 2012, the University of Arkansas College of Education and Health Professions recognized her as Outstanding Alumna in Education.

Marjorie had a deep and abiding faith in Jesus Christ as her Savior, rooted in her upbringing at Little Flock Primitive Baptist Church, where her father led shape-note singing. She was an early and active member of Fellowship Bible Church of Northwest Arkansas, where she served in the women's ministry and helped start the GriefShare program.

Passionate about family history, Marjorie contributed the Grady Ford article in History of Benton County, Arkansas. At reunions, Marjorie was known for gathering everyone around to share family stories with younger generations.

Marjorie loved organizing large gatherings and serving her guests outdoors on her deck. She collected cookbooks and historical books on the daily lives of women. She loved teaching her daughters and grandchildren about nature, visiting the seashore, and watching the colorful visitors to her bird feeders, which she always kept filled.

In recent years, Marjorie became increasingly concerned about the direction of our country and culture, often sending letters to the editor and circulating emails to friends and family to express her views. Last November's election results were deeply disheartening to her. The connection between nutrition and health was another abiding concern of hers.

Marjorie was a devoted wife, sister, aunt, mom, and grandmother, too, concerned about the well-being of her extended family, attending as many of her grandkids' performances as she could and taking pride in their achievements. My daughter spent a cherished week with her grandmother right after Christmas 2011, learning her grandmother's sewing techniques. For many years she sent out a monthly update to the far-flung Ford clan with prayer requests and that month's birthdays and anniversaries.

Here is video of that May 2012 University of Arkansas awards ceremony. Jim von Gremp, a long-time member of the Single Parent Scholarship board, introduces Marjorie Marugg Wolfe, who describes the history and challenges of the single parent scholarship fund. Ralph Nesson, Director of Development at the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund, who worked with Marjorie from the beginning, concludes the tribute.

Tulsa_Mayoral_Debate-2013_05_08-Closing_Statement.png

KTUL has posted video from Wednesday's League of Women Voters debate between incumbent Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr, former Councilor Bill Christiansen, and former Mayor Kathy Taylor. It's not all in one piece and their site is a bit difficult to navigate, so here are direct links to each clip. The first five clips were filmed with each candidate individually; the remainder are responses at the debate to questions from the audience:

Qualifications
City budget
Economic development
Public safety
Streets

Tax structure changes
How to attract jobs without an incentive fund
Chloramine in the city water supply
How to attract retail to north Tulsa
PLANiTULSA
Living wage for city employees
How to improve the health of Tulsa residents
Closing remarks

KTUL has posted some post-debate analysis on their site. I haven't watched all of the debate yet. I spent Wednesday evening at an awards ceremony where students in Tulsa Bible Church's Awana chapter were honored for achievements in memorizing Scripture. More important in the long run, I think. Something like 17 high school students were honored for completing the entire, rigorous program. Awana is an international organization; TBC has one of the most active chapters in the country.

An email this morning from attorney Kent Morlan, a downtown property owner and resident who represented his fellow property owners in the fight to overturn the misuse of the city's power to impose an assessment to pay for the new downtown ballpark. The politician behind that misuse was then-Mayor Kathy Taylor, who convinced a 5-4 majority of the City Council to go along with her. The assessment is a flat rate based on square footage of land plus square footage of buildings.

For a refresher on the case, the proper use of an assessment district under Oklahoma law, and the manipulations of Kathy Taylor and her wealthy allies, please see
my April 22, 2009, column.

You may also want to read this related story, about the Tulsa Development Authority's mistreatment of Cecilia and Will Wilkins developers who were working with TDA to redevelop a vacant lot. All was going well until the TDA-owned site across the street was chosen for the ballpark; suddenly, according to testimony in the case, Kathy Taylor started working behind the scenes to get the TDA to push the Wilkinses out of the way.

As this March 2009 letter from City finance director Michael Kier states, an assessment is a lien on the property, and if it is not paid within a year, the city is legally required to foreclose.

As you'll read below, there are significant legal issues at stake regarding the power of government to impose what amounts to a tax in all but name, but without the safeguards surrounding the imposition of taxes in Oklahoma.

The State Supreme Court should have taken up the issue; that they were unwilling makes me wonder about political pressures at work behind the scenes. If justice were done and the property owners' complaint were upheld, it would be yet another embarrassment for Kathy Taylor.

Is the ballpark a good thing for downtown? Of course. Is it as good for property a mile away as it is for property across the street? Of course not. Is there any benefit for state- and county-owned properties, who have to pay the assessment as well? No.

Here is Morlan's email:

It is with great regret and disappointment that I have to inform you that by a 5 to 4 vote the Oklahoma Supreme Court has declined to grant the Appellants' Petition for Cert. after the Oklahoma Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in favor of the City of Tulsa in Cox v. City of Tulsa.

As a result, all of you will directly or indirectly pay a total of $60 million in assessment to the City of Tulsa to pay the principal and interest on revenue bonds issued by the Baseball Stadium Trust to build the ONEOK Stadium located between the Brady District and Greenwood District in the northeast corner of the IDL.

By denying the Appellants' application for cert., the Supreme Court tacitly approved the City of Tulsa forcing approximately 1,400 owners of property located inside the IDL to pay for a general public improvement baseball stadium leased to the Tulsa Drillers for 10% of the annual principal and interest payments due on the bonds.

The Oklahoma Constitution allows municipalities to assess properties benefited by a local public improvement that directly and specially benefits the properties assessed for the cost of the improvements. Whether the City of Tulsa had the power to assess properties located within the IDL to pay for the ball park was a pure issues of law, but a motion for summary judgment on that issues was overruled by Judge Kuehn. She then severely limited the evidence that the sole remaining plaintiff was allowed to introduce in support of its assertion that its vacant lots and warehouse buildings located a mile south of the park did not benefit at all from the presence of the park before entering judgment in favor of the City.

The Court of Appeals, in a tortured opinion that completely ignored the facts and the law affirmed. The only hope was that the Supreme Court would grant certiorari and directly address the significant public policies issues raised by the Plaintiffs, including taking without just compensation of their property and unconstitutionally exempting property owned by religious institutions while assessing non-profits (which the Attorney General's offices opined was unconstitutional). That hope has proven to have been illusory.

Ed Cox, who, along with his wife, owned the Blair Apartment at 7th and Elwood, sought my assistance in 2008 to protect his property from being assessed died during the nearly five year struggle to protect hundreds of Downtown Tulsa property owners from having their property taken without just compensation. Ed died during the struggle. Whoever owns the property will be assessed for the next 25 years. The property has not benefited in any way from the presence of the ball park downtown. The same is true of Mike Samara, who owns a warehouse property located west of the BOK Center. Likewise the Zigler family on south Detroit and Mark Price on south Frankfurt and hundreds of other properties.

I promised Ed that I would prosecute his case free of charge because I did and do believe that assessing his property to build a ball park for the benefit of all of Tulsans was wrong. I fought the best fight that I knew how. I kept the faith with him but the legal fight is over. To say that I am disappointed with the treatment of my clients by the courts of Oklahoma would be an understatement. We had the facts and we had the law and we had what was right and just but we obviously did not have the politics on our side.

Maybe Kathy Taylor, who is again spending millions to be once more the Mayor of the City of Tulsa, will see fit to right the wrong that she created when she successfully imposed a huge economic burden on the owners of properties inside the IDL when she got the City Council to approve the resolution creating the Baseball Stadium Assessment District.

MORE:

In 2009, then-Councilor Bill Christiansen explains his decision to vote against the ballpark assessment roll. (Video from Steven Roemerman.) At the same meeting Councilor Rick Westcott, an attorney, explained the legal issues involved. (Here's part 2.) He notes that the old assessment district was proportional to proximity to the Main Mall and Bartlett Square, based on the assumption that the benefit would be greater near these amenities.

Here are excerpts from the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment, which provides more detail about the legal basis for the suit.

There are reports of extensive fire damage to the Rolling Hills Shopping Center, on Admiral Pl west of 193rd East Ave in far east Tulsa.

Assistant Fire Marshal Rick Bruder told reporters that a discount store and a pizza restaurant were likely destroyed as the fire caused their roofs to collapse. Also damaged is a clothing store, an insurance agency and an auto parts store.

It's telling that none of the news reports name the center. There once was an impressive sign at the Admiral Place entrance, but it's been long gone.

When my family moved to Rolling Hills in 1969, the Rolling Hills Shopping Center was the only such place for miles around. (The next nearest shopping center was Wagon Wheel at Admiral and Garnett.) County Assessor records say that it was built in 1968. Here's the lineup, from east to west, as I remember it:

OTASCO (not there in 1969, but built on in the 1970s)
Red Bud Supermarket
Raley's Pharmacy
Mini-Mall (with barber shop)
T. G. & Y.
Liquor store
Dry cleaners
Lon's Laundry (around the corner, facing west)

And then the freestanding buildings:

Tastee Freeze (built in 1965, northwest corner)
Roll-In Lounge (east side, facing 193rd)
Phillips 66 (corner of Admiral and 193rd)

There was an MFA insurance agent in there somewhere, too. Roll-In Lounge was a beer joint (B. Y. O. L.). The mini-mall had a space where my sister took tap and ballet lessons. In high school, she worked for Raley's.

Before we had our own washer and dryer, we'd take our laundry to Lon's. The fellow who ran it (Lon, I suppose) was white-headed, tall, and skinny, and he whistled tunes that I didn't recognize. It was hot and steamy, especially in the summer, and there was the smell of soap powder and the taste of a cold bottle of Grapette from the Pepsi machine. I don't recall that it was air conditioned. I can remember sitting in Lon's in a shell-backed metal lawn chair, with a notebook, a 4-color pen, and a road atlas, plotting out an upcoming family vacation, while we waited on the next load to finish.

The T. G. & Y. -- 5¢ to $1.00 -- was where you went for school supplies, fabric, and simple toys. They lasted until not long after Wal-Mart built their first Tulsa store (assessor records say 1972, but that seems too early to me), about 40,000 square feet, less than half the size of a SuperCenter. I recall T. G. & Y. posting defiant "we will not be undersold!" signs. The Wal-Mart building is now some sort of light industrial business. The T. G. & Y. space became a C. R> Anthony store and then (much later) Dollar General.

When OTASCO closed, Red Bud took over the space. At some point, they became Marvin's. Old-timers will remember a stand near the entrance that sold Hillbilly Barbecue sandwiches.

Although the center has been in the City of Tulsa's limits since 1966, it's always been associated with Catoosa, as most of its patrons were in the town of Catoosa or its school district. Rolling Hills east of 193rd was unincorporated back then, but in the Catoosa school district.

It's been sad to see the decline of the center, but it has followed the same downward path as similar centers built in the same era. The presence of the Hard Rock Casino seems to have drawn all the new development to the Catoosa side of I-44 (which is the Tulsa/Catoosa and Tulsa County / Rogers County boundary).

In the spotlight


Races for Tulsa Mayor, Tulsa County Commissioner, and Tulsa City Council will all be on the ballot in 2013. Follow BatesLine for the latest on all the candidates and their records. We won't let anyone get away with rewriting history.

Classical Christian education in Tulsa Open houses and informational meetings

Give your kids a strong academic foundation with a Christian education in the classical model. Learn about two great options in Tulsa:

Open houses for Augustine Christian Academy, a traditional K-12 school that also offers a part-time option for homeschoolers.

Informational meetings for Classical Conversations, a homeschooling approach with 10 communities in the Tulsa area.


Complete archive of BatesLine's coverage of Tulsa County's corporate-welfare and pork-barrel tax package, on the ballot this November. Officially on the ballot as County Proposition No. 1 and County Proposition No. 2.


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BBC News - German dialect in Texas is one of a kind, and dying out

These are the roots from which my father-in-law sprang. Youngest speakers are in their 60s, the last generation that grew up with German spoken at home, church, and school. A University of Texas scholar is documenting the dialect while there's still time. The BBC story explains some of the distinctives of the Texas variety of German. You can learn more at the Texas German Dialect Project website.

The Impact of Federal Involvement in America's Classrooms

Andrew J. Coulson's February 10, 2011, testimony to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Includes graphs showing federal per-pupil spending vs. achievement and total K-12 public school spending vs. achievement, 1970-2010.

The Juilliard Effect - Ten Years Later - NYTimes.com

In 2004, the New York Times hunted for the 44 instrumentalists who graduated with the Juilliard Class of 1994. After 10 years, fewer than half of these gifted musicians were making a living performing music.

Google Earth Engine: Landsat Annual Timelapse 1984-2012

This view is centered on Tulsa, but you can look anywhere and watch the process of development and road-building.

American English Dialects

This complex map, accompanied by charts and notes, depicts the geographical extent various dialects of English in North America. The historical notes describe the historical events that drove the migrations that shaped the odd patterns. For example: What historical development may have influenced Oklahoma City's dialect to be different from areas to the north and south?

How Government Killed the Medical Profession - Reason.com

A surgeon explains how the Federal Government's requirement to use standard coding for Medicare reimbursement has led to the bureaucratization of the entire medical profession: "The coding system was supposed to improve the accuracy of adjudicating claims submitted by doctors and hospitals to Medicare, and later to non-Medicare insurance companies. Instead, it gave doctors and hospitals an incentive to find ways of describing procedures and services with the cluster of codes that would yield the biggest payment. Sometimes this required the assistance of consulting firms. A cottage industry of fee-maximizing advisors and seminars bloomed....

"As the third party payment system led health care costs to escalate, the people footing the bill have attempted to rein in costs with yet more command-and-control solutions....

"Twenty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, protocols and regimentation were imposed on America's physicians through a centralized bureaucracy. Using so-called 'evidence-based medicine,' algorithms and protocols were based on statistically generalized, rather than individualized, outcomes in large population groups....

"What began as guidelines eventually grew into requirements. In order for hospitals to maintain their Medicare certification, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began to require their medical staff to follow these protocols or face financial retribution....

"These rules are being bred into the system. Young doctors and medical students are being trained to follow protocol. To them, command and control is normal. But to older physicians who have lived through the decline of medical culture, this only contributes to our angst."

Astronomy Picture of the Day: Wringing a Wet Towel in Orbit

Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield demonstrates the odd, fascinating result of wringing a wet towel in the microgravity of the International Space Station.

Coding, Fast and Slow: Developers and the Psychology of Overconfidence

"First off, there are, I believe, really two reasons why we're so bad at making estimates. The first is the sort of irreducible one: writing software involves figuring out something in such incredibly precise detail that you can tell a computer how to do it. And the problem is that, hidden in the parts you don't fully understand when you start, there are often these problems that will explode and just utterly screw you.

"And this is genuinely irreducible. If you do "fully understand" something, you've got a library or existing piece of software that does that thing, and you're not writing anything. Otherwise, there is uncertainty, and it will often blow up. And those blow ups can take anywhere from one day to one year to beyond the heat death of the universe to resolve....

"The key is that you first accept that making accurate long-term estimates is fundamentally impossible. Once you've done that, you can tackle a challenge which, though extremely difficult, can be met: how you can your dev team generate a ton of value, even though you can not make meaningful long-term estimates?"

Oklahoma Teacher: October 1921 issue: October Bible Readings

Back in October 1921, on p. 22, the official publication of the Oklahoma Education Association offered a list of daily Bible readings and weekly memory verses.

NYC Municipal Archives Online Gallery

A virtual time machine! See this Daily Mail story for some beautiful examples of photographed urban history from the New York City Municipal Archives.

"Welcome to the New York City Municipal Archives Online Gallery of over 870,000 images. Selected from the world-class historical collections of the Archives, most of these unique photographs, maps, motion picture and audio recordings are being made accessible for the first time. Visitors are invited to explore and search the collections individually, or across all collections by keyword or any of the advanced search criteria. The gallery includes many complete collections; for others, only representative samples are currently on display. Visitors are encouraged to return frequently as new content will be added on a regular basis. Patrons may order reproductions in the form of prints or digital files; most images can be licensed for commercial use. Please see the order page for further details."


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